The present invention relates generally to medicine storage and dispensing apparatuses, and in particular to a medicine organizer useful for storing and dispensing pills that includes a pill storage unit and a bottle storage unit.
As further background, a variety of medicine organizer designs have been proposed, many with the goal of improving patient compliance with prescribed regimens of medication. These medicine organizers have attempted to provide means for the patient to conveniently store medications pending further use, and/or to readily dispense those medications at the time of use. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,693,371 to Malpass describes a medication dispenser and container that includes a tray divided into multiple cavities, each for containing a medicine. Each cavity is divided into an accessible portion and an inaccessible portion, the latter being covered by a transparent wall and containing an exemplary dosage of the medicine to be taken.
In another example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,473,156 to Martin describes a tray apparatus having multiple pill-containing cavities including daily indicia and time-of-day indicia. The time-of-day indicia includes color coding. As disclosed in this patent, the tray apparatus may be stored in a box and pill bottles may be stored atop the box and color coordinated with the colors on the tray apparatus. U.S. Pat. No. 4,749,085 discloses another pill tray that is divided into multiple compartments with daily and time-of-day indicia.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,753,340 to Blakeman et al. discloses a device for storing and carrying medicines. The device provides removable fastening of the original containers of medicine using hook and eye fasteners such as Velcro. The medicine containers are fastened to vertical wall members which are mounted on a turn table base. U.S. Pat. No. 5,351,818 to Daneshbar discloses a medicine box that has a hinged lid to close a generally rectangular enclosure. The enclosure includes a lower portion for holding pill bottles and an overlying weekly pill container resting atop walls within the rectangular enclosure. The weekly pill container is smaller in dimension than the box in a fashion that provides an area toward the front of the box to house taller pill bottles.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,644,689 to Mirlisena discloses a shelf organizer that includes a shelf having cylindrical sleeves mounted under the shelf, for use in a medicine cabinet. The cylindrical sleeves are sized to accommodate bottles, tubes or similar items containing medicines.
In view of this background, there remain needs for improved medicine organizers which provide both pill-storage and bottle-storage features, which may be flexibly used to organize medicines of a prescribed regimen, and which are effectively transportable by the user. The present invention is addressed to these needs.